The Food of the People. 
123 
bino, the education of the children of the agricultural labourers 
mij^lit, witli better arrangements, be carried on, not at the soh? 
expense, but under the influence and control of their employers, 
in the spirit of a " work-school," with a direct view to the edu- 
cation of future agricultural labours, and with an express con- 
nexion between their school progress and their farm employ- 
ment, so that a lad and his parents would look forward to his 
employment on the farm as his natural destiny, as a result of his 
good conduct and progress in the school, as naturally and confi- 
dently as at present the lad in the works-school looks forward to 
employment in the factory. Such an improved state of things 
would be greatly facilitated in those cases where the employers 
could conveniently provide board and lodging for the lads, under 
suitable superintendence, on the farms. By good arrangements they 
could be well fed at a very low cost, and every medical man will 
testify that without sufficient food in childhood it is impossible 
to arrive at a healthy manhood. There is only one kind of 
economy which is worse than that of allowing the land or the 
stock to starve, and that worst kind of all is to allow those to be 
insufficiently fed in childhood who are to work for your wages 
when they grow up, and whom you must maintain on your poor- 
rates when they are no longer able to work. 
VIII. — On Land Drainage and Improvement hy Loans from 
Government or Public Companies. By J. Bailey Denton, 
Mem. Inst. C.E., F.G.S. 
Prize Essay. 
1. In the year 1840 the late Mr. Philip Pusey succeeded in 
passing through Parliament his Act (3 & 4 Vict. c. LV.) " to 
enable the owners of settled estates to defray the expenses of 
draining the same by way of mortgage." By that Act owners 
for life could only borrow money on the security of their estates 
with the approval of the Court of Chancery. 
The very mention of the Court of Chancery will at once 
explain how it was that no appreciable result followed the 
passing of the Act — only eleven applications having been made. 
The expense as well as the tedious nature of Chancery pro- 
ceedings, which were fairly represented before the late Duke of 
Richmond's Committee in the House of Lords, in 1845,* acted 
as a veto. One great principle, however, was established by 
Mr. Pusey's Act, viz., that owners of settled estates might 
* See Appendix to the Evidence taken before the Committee. 
